1. Field
The embodiments described below relate to the computation of digital image histograms.
2. Description
A histogram is an estimate of a probability density function of an image intensity. For each image pixel value within an image, a histogram specifies a number of occurrences of the image pixel value within the image. Many imaging algorithms use histograms during image analysis.
Efficient computation of an image histogram can be problematic. For example, a Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)-based Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) employs a highly parallel computation model. Conventional algorithms for computing a histogram using this computation model can be either 1) efficient only with respect to certain (i.e., non-spiky) image data value distributions, or 2) independent of image data value distribution but inefficient.
Systems are desired to provide efficient histogram computation.